Columbus (9 page)

They think I’m just another patron, no different than them, in their world. They better hope their own clocks never strike nine.

I arrive at Archibald’s office on Harrison, a former factory that must have manufactured an array of piping, based on the uncut aluminum lying around and the smell of stale air.

Six dead-eyed security guards stand sentinel, eyeing me as I approach. I don’t have to say who I am, they know, they’ve been told, and they step aside as one shows me in to see the boss.

His demeanor has changed. I was afraid of this, was resigned to it, but I guess I had hoped he still had a residual fear of me and was eager to stay in my good graces. But Archibald Grant, above all else, is an opportunist.

“Here’s the what-for. . . . ” he says as soon as I sit down. “You ever see that movie
The Replacement Killers?
”

I shake my head.

“Jet Li? Directed by a black guy?”

I shake my head a second time.

“Well, you should check it out, Columbus. Rent it on Netflix. You know, when the shit settles. Anyway, I got ears all over, including all the way over on the other side of the Atlantic. Here’s what you got staring at you down the other end of the barrel.

“Three killers. An Irish Setter named Leary what’s got a beard and carries a blade.”

“He’s dead.”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard. Took two pops down in Georgia.”

“You heard right.”

“I told you I got ears. Here’s where the replacement killers come in . . . one didn’t do the job so your enemy hired two more.”

“Hydra-style.”

“Yeah, hydra-style, that’s good. Anyway, you got a man out of Czech Republic goes by the name of Svoboda . . . which I heard half the country goes by the name of. He’s supposed to be a silver bear like you. Top, top, top shelf and then the shelf above that. I tried to get him in for a job once, but his fence just scoffed at me. So he must be collecting a pretty penny on you.

“And if that weren’t enough ketchup on your hot dog, the other killer is an Argentine woman named Llanos. Don’t ask me what that name means, cuz I don’t know shit. I do know this woman executed some serious blood contracts down in South America. Her rep is that she’s like morning frost . . . cold as ice and disappears when the sun comes up.”

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and they can pick off each other before they get to me.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“Yeah, well . . . I’ll have to plan for the opposite.”

“Yeah.”

He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. “Now we get down to the flop, turn and river and get all the cards out on the table.”

“Lay ’em down for me then.”

“You kill these two, four more coming. You know it and I know it. This big Papi wants you dead and he’s got the bank account to make it happen, no matter how long you run. What you need to do is get to the source.”

No, Archibald Grant may be a lot of things, but he isn’t stupid. He’s setting up a new proposition; his body language is as easy to read as a map. He’s got all the pieces out on his chessboard, and he’s preparing to mount an attack.

“I know who it is. I know the owner of the purse strings. I know who put the paper on you.”

His fingers stay laced, and a grin spreads out on his face. I can barely look at all those teeth. I’m not going to help him along any further, so I hold my tongue.

“I’ll give you the name too. I owe you that. For what happened to you and your fence on that Abe Mann job. It’s just that I need you to do a little something for me first.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah . . . nothing you can’t handle straightaway.”

“What is it?”

“A local job.”

I shake my head. “Out of the question.”

“Now look here. I need this. It’s personal. I moved into Chi-town and there’s a pair of pests I haven’t quite scattered out of the kitchen. I worked up a file on em, but I don’t want to use any of my guys. Best to look like these bucks made enemies elsewhere. That’s where you come in. You can make it happen, cap’n.”

“How about I
make
you tell me the name and then we never see each other again?”

He hasn’t knocked that smile off his face. I imagine he has some hole card he wants to play; I might as well get it out on the table too so we both can see it.

“Well, see, let’s not get hasty here. We’re businessmen doing business. I went the extra mile for you, getting information you need to survive, and now I want something
from
you. And here’s the kicker, Columbus . . . I’m the only one in the entire world who knows you took out Abe Mann right before the Democratic National Convention. You think that case file ain’t still drawing teams of Feds and half the local departments in this country? You a smart guy . . . hell, maybe the best gun in the world. Fuck if I know. But I gotta take care of mine, and if I put a file in a safety box somewhere that outlines what I know, only to be released to the Federal authorities in the event of my untimely death, can you blame me?”

I start to say something, but he interrupts, still smiling. “And before you start talking about my family or my wives or my nieces and nephews or my grandpappy back in Georgia, just know that I don’t give a South Side fuck about none of em. Knock yourself out. The only person on the Earth I care about is the one talking to you right now, and I’d say it’s in your best interest to keep me alive.”

He’s got me and he knows it. There’s nothing I can do but play along.

“I eighty-six your rivals, you give me the name?”

“We’ll be all square.”

“Then give me the goddamn file.”

He leans forward in his chair, and I didn’t think it was possible, but his smile grows even wider.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE NAMES AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE ARE DALAN AND DARIUS WEBB.
The attached pictures reveal a set of identical twins, black men in their late thirties. Sharp blue eyes contrast with dark skin and malevolent expressions. At first blush, they look like mirror images, but a closer inspection reveals Darius’s nose as slightly longer, his jaw slightly sharper. Archibald’s work in the file is meticulous and exact, like he relished the chance of putting this one together.

The Webb brothers like to keep to themselves, only venturing out of the condo they share near Lake Michigan when they have a meeting, either with one of their hit men or with a prospective client. Their unit sits on top of a well-guarded building, a place where people with a lot of money pay a hefty mortgage to keep those without a lot of money at bay. The dearth of firsthand information about their condo leads me to believe Archibald never penetrated it.

I’ve often struck people at their residences. The advantage the target holds in terms of knowing the location is countered by the simple fact that most people relax at home, let their guard down once the front door is locked. But the Webb brothers’ choice of living quarters suggests their defenses are always engaged. Deliveries are halted at the door. Strangers are turned away. The only people allowed to enter the elevator have to be accompanied by a resident. No exceptions. Inconvenience has been traded for safety, with no regrets.

Archibald’s file moves on to describe the brothers’ operation. They have a roster of eight to ten gunmen whom they employ regularly, small-time guys who mostly work right here in Chicago. The Webb brothers are characteristic of the seedier side of the killing business, the cheap alternative to what I do, the 2-for-1 coupon in the back of the Shopper’s Guide. They don’t charge much, they take any job that comes their way, and they send as many guys as necessary to get the work done, no matter how sloppy. There’s a market for low-rent killing, and these guys fill it.

My first fence taught me that to kill as I do, to execute a contract on someone’s life and then walk away from it cleanly, I needed to
realize
a connection with the target so I could
sever
that connection. I needed to find aspects of my target’s life I could hate, not just tangentially, but physically, viscerally
hate
, not just the noun “hate,” but the verb “to hate,” actively
hate
, with passion and concentration and emotion behind it. Only then could I kill, could I snap that connection, before moving on to the next target.

The Webb brothers are easy men to loathe. They take the art of my business and make it base and common. They have no respect for the profession. I can see it in the somnolent eyes staring out at me from the picture attached to the file.

They work out of the Union Stock Yards, what used to be the capital of the butchering industry in America, where Upton Sinclair famously focused his unblinking prose. Now heavily industrial, the only butchering ordered here appears to be of the human variety.

Their base is a renovated warehouse on Pershing Road. It is well armed and well guarded. Archibald has been inside, must have been when he first came to town and the brothers failed to realize they were meeting with a rival. His sketches of the layout are detailed, precise. They have three rooms, dimly lit, windowless. An office for each brother adjoins a conference room where they hand out assignments, meet with clients, put their files together. They have one permanent employee, a secretary named Craig Juda, a former Israeli soldier who files more than paperwork. Archibald spends a great deal of ink on Juda: his schedule, his history. He poses the biggest threat to making a clean hit. I’ll avoid him if possible, kill him if necessary.

The trick to working a double, like this assignment, is to kill both marks within moments of each other. If I manage to kill one but not the other, I risk the target turning into a serious threat, fueled by anger and revenge and adrenaline. Or worse, the target goes underground, into deep hiding, off the page from whatever information my fence is able to put together ahead of time.

The best bet is to drop Dalan and Darius before either twin can process what befell the other.

Archibald Grant and I sit in the Golden Bull restaurant, a Chinese food dive near the Lakeside Hospital. After dropping off our food, the waitress moves over to a corner to take a nap. It’s my kind of place.

“I hear what-tell the South American chick? Llanos? She’s here in Chicago. Right now.”

“How do you know?”

“That’s my business.”

“You running a play on me?”

“I’m
telling
you, man. I’m trying to help you.” He doesn’t meet my eyes, just digs his fork into his rice bowl. This is worrisome, though not entirely out of Archibald Grant’s character. He’s as shifty as desert sand, and I have a nagging feeling I made an error seeking him out.

“You got a leak in your office then. No one knows I’m here.”

“Someone do. If that leak came from my office, there’s gonna be blood on the floor by the end of the day, I guarantee you that.”

I don’t respond, and he keeps shoveling chicken and rice into his mouth, his fork scraping the side of the bowl.

Finally, he looks up, clearing his gums with his tongue. “How’s the other thing shaking?”

“It’s going to go down in a matter of days, maybe sooner in light of what you just told me. Make yourself available immediately after with the name I want on the tip of your tongue.”

He leans back and flashes me that smile. “After all I do for you, you still don’t trust me?”

“Thanks for lunch,” I say, pushing my chair back.

“You gonna get ’em through the mother?”

I don’t answer as I leave the restaurant.

I need to do this now, today. If someone leaked to Llanos my location in the windy city, then Svoboda can’t be far behind. Who knows if they’ve already spotted me? Who knows if Archibald called that lunch meeting so they could start tracking me? Maybe they negotiated a deal with him. He points me out like Judas in the garden by sitting with me in the restaurant, and they pledge to descend upon me once I’ve taken out his rivals. It would be a dumb play on Archibald’s part: either assassin will kill me as soon as he or she can, regardless of the promises they proffer to a small-time Chicago fence. Like I said before, Archibald is no imbecile. No, my gut says he was telling me the truth in order to warn me, that he wants my work finished and his rivals in body bags. After I complete the mission, well, that’s another story. After I kill the Webb brothers, all bets are off.

He’s right, of course. I’m going to get to them through their mother.

Her name is Laverne Contessa Webb and she lives alone in a home north of the city, in Evanston, near the Northwestern campus. She is the secret the Webb brothers have kept hidden since the moment they entered this line of work. They invented a biography for themselves, concocting an origin story out of the Western district of Baltimore: orphaned twins, victims of the drug wars of the early eighties.

They can talk a good game. They know the names of streets and row houses and corner boys and dealers from Baltimore in case someone has a cousin or a nephew from that part of the country and checks up on them. They know intimate details of major drug events from the past, when and where they were standing when Big Randy bought two to the head on Fayette Street, where and when they were standing when Tej Junior took over the corners on West Lombard. And yet, none of this history is true.

Dalan and Darius Webb grew up in Vancouver, Canada, the sons of a Methodist preacher. The preacher had a small congregation, a decent salary, a modest home, and a doting wife who loved him unconditionally. The preacher’s wife, however, was not their mother.

Laverne Contessa Webb managed the office of the small church, serving at once as its accountant, secretary, social planner, fund-raiser, and any of hundreds of other functions including, on occasion, sermon author. She worked closely with the preacher and fell for him when his mild flirtations gave way to serious advances. Once she became pregnant, she was chased from the church by a congregation who liked to listen to ancient stories about forgiveness while avoiding any themselves. The preacher rebuked her mercilessly as sin incarnate.

She fled to her childhood home, a small farmhouse in Iowa, where she and her elderly parents raised the twin boys. They were home-schooled, they worked on the farm, and they grew up with innate distrust. And when they chose this life, the killing life, they held on to only one thing from their sordid past: the love of their mother.